


Eight's Machete

by HopeStoryteller



Series: stay close (move fast) [6]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Female Runner Five, Gen, Revenge, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Spoilers up to S2M44, Van Ark can go choke on a saguaro cactus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeStoryteller/pseuds/HopeStoryteller
Summary: For as long as Five's known her, Eight's carried around that machete.
Relationships: Runner Five & Sara Smith
Series: stay close (move fast) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698457
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Eight's Machete

For as long as Five’s known her, Eight’s carried around that machete. There are three tattered scraps of cloth fastened around the handle: one blue, one green, one orange. It’s usually sheathed, but Five’s caught her holding it in her lap a few times, gripping the handle like it’s the only thing keeping her going, and maybe it is.

Eight—Sara—gave Five the machete after she got bitten and ran. Machete, headset, pack—everything. No sense wasting valuable tech, after all, not when she was going to turn in a matter of hours at most.

Five’s carried that machete with her since. Technically, runners aren’t supposed to carry weapons, but nobody had gotten on Sara’s case about it and nobody got on Five’s either. It’s saved her life a couple times, more than that, and a part of Five wondered if maybe Sara was still with them somehow through her trusty machete.

Then came the cruise ship, the _Aurora_ , and suddenly things got a lot more complicated.

“Hey—Sara,” Five says as the group comes to a stop just inside Abel’s gates. “I know you’ll be pretty busy tonight, considering the whole. Back from the dead thing. But if you’ve got a few minutes…”

“Probably the only few minutes I’ll have all night,” Sara says wryly. “Go right ahead.”

Without any further ado, without any fuss, Five unhooks the machete and hands it back to Sara. “I… thought you might want this.”Sara’s eyes go wide. She takes it almost reverently, and holds it for a long moment. Her fingers feel the scraps of cloth. The blue, the green—she lingers on the orange, blinks hard.

“Thank you.”

If Five had any doubt about what the machete meant to her before, it’s gone now.

* * *

“I heard pissing on zombie bites slows the spread of the virus,” Five doesn’t say. Partially because it’s probably already too late, and partially because—well, it probably wouldn’t work anyway.

She doesn’t say anything. Can’t say anything to comfort Sara even as she’s dying. Paula and Sam have it as under control as it can be but—there’s so many things she wants to say, and can’t, and never will get to say. But Sara looks at her, and somehow, somehow, Five gets the feeling she already knows.

“You’d better send Van Ark right along after me, Five,” Sara chokes out. “I’ll be waiting for him.”

She fumbles with the machete, presses it into Five’s grip just in time for another coughing fit. Her eyes flutter shut, and the hand tightly gripped by Paula goes limp.

“She’s gone,” Paula says, unnecessarily.

Five holds the machete. She thinks she knows why Sara used to hold it so tightly, now. Not that she didn’t already. Now the knowledge is just firsthand.

* * *

It might have been the rocket launcher that killed Van Ark, but Five hadn’t let him die without getting in a few good hits from an old friend’s machete.

**Author's Note:**

> F in the chat for Runner Eight, Sara Smith. She'll be missed ;-; at least we got Van Ark. And now there's an entirely nEW enemy and thanks I hate it but at least we don't have to worry about Van Ark anymore. And at least maybe, maybe, Eight got to see her family again.


End file.
